Author Aldous Huxley once wrote, “Government-through-terror
works, on the whole, less well than government through nonviolent manipulation
of the environment and of the thoughts and feelings of individual men,
women, and children.”

But the eerily perceptive futurist,
who in 1932 published the ultimate government-through-nonviolent manipulation
nightmare, Brave
New World, nonetheless
pegged television as the medium through which his dystopian vision would
be realized in the Western world. He was right: Television for decades
has been the velvet whip with which powerful social, political, and commercial
forces — the so-called establishment — have relentlessly endeavored
to keep us all in a conformist stupor.

Well, he would have been really ratified
by this pair of new dramas debuting on television this fall. Showtime’s Homeland and CBS’s Person
of Interest are nothing
less than post-9/11 government propaganda wrapped in slick, modern cinematography,
fronted by pretty people and delivered with supposedly “complicated”
plots and characters. Think 24 3.0 — except that now, we don’t cheer
the government breaking every law of war and man to bag foreign terrorists.
Instead, we countenance the suspension of the Constitution as it applies
to us, the American citizen, in the interest of national security
(Homeland) and law & order (Person of Interest).

One might be tempted to say “Who
cares?” — television is an ancient medium that must compete with
the Internet and every other social-entertainment device for attention.
But TV is still one of the great equalizers and the hearth of the home.
It’s where most people continue to get their news, and according to
the A.C. Nielsen Co., the average American still watches four hours of programming
a day, or 28 hours a week.
The average household has at least two television sets. Total annual
TV hours watched in America: 260 billion.

Don’t forget, you can watch TV online
now too (that’s how I came across these “hot” new series), and
let’s be serious, Huxley would be impressed at how deftly the Net
itself has been corporatized and manipulated into the next-gen conformist
tool: Millions of people a day spend millions of dollars and that many
hours cultivating fake
online farms and simulated friendships,
producing nothing but profits for big game and social media moguls like Zynga, Facebook, and Google. “Time wasters” are
the road to passivity and ignorance, and they don’t just come in the
form of silly sitcoms and game shows.

But Homeland and Person
of Interest are far from time wasters. They’re indoctrination.
And here’s why.

Let’s start with Person of Interest,
because it is has the less sophisticated agenda of the two. Plot:
hot-headed former CIA agent with mysterious past teams up with equally
opaque geek genius “to prevent violent crimes by using their own brand
of vigilante justice.” It’s more Death
Wish than Star Chamber, however, because stripped down, there’s
a lot of shooting and fists flying and the vigilantes are the good guys
who save at least one person per episode.

Person of Interest

So what makes this different? Genius
is also a billionaire who has “invented a program that uses pattern
recognition to identify people about to be involved in violent crimes.”
More specifically, he was tasked by the government after 9/11 to create
a massive data mining tool that could collect, watch, and analyze the
whereabouts and goings-on of every person in the United States (think Total Information Awareness on steroids). Genius (a.k.a. Mr. Finch) laments
the machine is only authorized to ferret out terrorists, because
he knows it could be programmed not only to track regular criminals but also to
anticipate and thwart violent crimes like kidnapping and
murder.

Frustrated he can’t use his invention
as a complete force for good, our techie strikes out on his own and
enlists a resourceful strong arm (Reese, played by a former Jesus, Jim Caviezel) to help carry out justice à la Charles Bronson.
Conveniently, one “number” (the Social Security kind) pops out from
the machine every episode based on an unexplained series of connections
generated by the all-seeing Eye
of Sauron — sorry, wrong
fairy tale — the machine.

It’s then the job of Mr. Finch and
Reese to track down this person and solve the impending violent crime.
Reese largely assumes the physical responsibilities for this, knocking
in doors, beating the tar out of people, shooting so-called “suspects”
dead in the street or in public places like Laundromats, while Mr. Finch
taps into cell phones, voice mail, computer files, bank records, whatever.

Though Jack Bauer first paved this
road almost 10 years ago, it’s still amazing how so-called liberal
Hollywood can advance what amounts to surveillance porn for the state —
visualizing the ability to electronically spy on everyone in the
country at all times without warrant, and actually, as Tim Gunn says
in Project Runway, “make it work” — call it “security,” and
then promote it as some sort of acceptable development in law
enforcement.

The message: The state has the ability
to protect you. But the state lacks imagination and often won’t
use the tools it has to their fullest potential. So sometimes brave
people (vigilantes) must come forward to do the job, even if that means
breaking those silly laws that come between the police and saving the
little girl from the murderous thug in Washington Square Park.

Unfortunately for the propagandists, Person of Interest soon falls victim to formula. The writers make sure
to explain that the machine only spits out numbers, not whether the
people attached to them are victims or perpetrators or how the violent
acts will go down. So our heroes must spend the hour engaged in good
old-fashioned detective work, utilizing what we scarcely remember to
be human intelligence. It’s not long before we realize that on its
own, the multi-million-dollar, super-duper invasive gadgetry won’t
cut it. You need capable people to put the pieces together, and that
puts us back at square one — Sept. 10, 2001, in fact. Outcomes are
still determined by whether you get Sherlock Holmes or Inspector Clouseau on the case, and no amount of algorithmic
hocus pocus is ever going to save the world.

But the show does reach for and perhaps
is successful at driving one point home, that we’re not that far from
the All-Seeing Eye, or at least an attempt at one. The government every
day has new ways of “keeping us safe” and “getting the bad guys”
through better IT. Individual privacy is rapidly becoming a quaint and
obsolete concept, no doubt disappearing for good sometime in the early
21st century, much like the idea of the police being your
city’s “finest,” or government officials “servants of the people.”
Soon we’ll be okay with the Eye, too — as long as it’s for
our own good.

Now we segue to Homeland, which,
not surprisingly, is brought to us by the same executive producers as 24. Fantastic. Jack Bauer is reborn in Carrie Mathison, who is
just like the girl next door — if your neighbor is a bipolar (she’s
taking drugs for that) CIA agent who has gone rogue and is wound so
tight you half expect her to become a human RPG at any moment, single-handedly
taking out an entire al-Qaeda cell in a single round.

Homeland

But her sights are set on an American — Nicholas Brody, a Marine, who was found by Delta Force after eight
years of captivity in Afghanistan. Brody comes home to a hero’s welcome,
but Mathison, who the writers assure us was a CIA “case worker”
in Iraq before getting demoted while overreaching and causing “a national
incident,” is convinced he was “turned” by his al-Qaeda captors
and sets out to expose him.

So, unlike the novel and 1962 adaptation
of The
Manchurian Candidate,
where the former POWs themselves solve the mystery of their brainwashing
by Chinese Communists, it’s up to the power of the state (i.e., Agent
Mathison and friends) by any means necessary to identify and neutralize
the enemy, who’s even scarier than al-Qaeda — he’s the returning
war veteran.

This calls for, quite literally, conducting
extreme surveillance on Brody and his family and anyone they come into
contact with. This includes cameras pointed at the bed while Brody is
making love to his wife, scars on his naked back. Why does his wife
look anxious while in the coital embrace? Does she feel her husband
is not the “same” man? Mathison unselfishly struggles through these
and other uncomfortable stakeouts to her get man.

But is all what it seems? Homeland
quickly falls into formulaic step with Person of Interest. In
this case, it must keep viewers guessing so they’ll come back each
week. Is Brody really a bad guy? Or is Mathison just crazy like a Fox Mulder on anti-psychotics barking up the wrong Washington
monument? Homeland wants it both ways, though we know something’s
going on with Brody, considering the flashbacks where he’s seen
pummeling — at the behest of his captors — his partner and buddy, Cpl.
Walker,
who never returned from their shared imprisonment. And, oh no, Brody
has a prayer rug and knows how to face Mecca!

Throughout, Homeland perpetuates
the Washington myth that al-Qaeda is more powerful and capable than
it likely ever was. Next, it implies that the insurgents are the only
ones kidnapping, torturing, and “turning” people in captivity,
when we know they face much
broader, state-sanctioned competition on that front.

A favorite line in the premiere episode
is when Mathison is debriefing Brody on his return and she asserts with
the best sense of authority she can muster that the first 72 hours
of interrogation are “the most critical” when it comes to getting
any real information from a suspect. “Yet he was kept alive for eight
years,” she says incredulously, “and I want to ask him why.”

Hey, sister, why don’t you get out
of your camera cave for one minute, take a staff flight to Gitmo, and
ask your colleagues there that very same question?

When did Hollywood become such a casual
promoter of fascism? When it became politically
and profitably convenient to do so. Otherwise, it would be jamming these
post-9/11 PATRIOT Act realities through a more cautionary lens, attempting,
at least, a clarion call to all the zombies and sleepwalkers predominant
in our pathetically passive American culture.

Instead, with rare exception, most
crime dramas today reassure us that despite a few rotten tomatoes in
his garden and a lot of stumbling and bumbling through parenthood, Big
Papa Government is a benevolent guardian with only our best interests
in mind.

The sorriest aspect of it all is that
not one reviewer questions this agenda. The conditioning has long set
in. The
Los Angeles Times calls Homeland “the first telling of a post-9/11 story that is all
the things it should be: politically resonant, emotionally wrenching,
and plain old thrilling to watch.”

We are guessing that “truthful”
doesn’t make the list of “all things it should be.”

On the other hand, Entertainment Weekly says Person of Interest can “simultaneously
unsettle, comfort, excite, and amuse — something for everyone, if,
like Mr. Finch, you like to watch.”

Those reviewers who want us to know
that they know this is surveillance porn cleverly explain
it away as illustrative of post-9/11 “paranoia.” Baloney. That implies
we still think we are being watched and can’t prove it. Both Person
of Interest and Homeland confirm that Big Brother is watching. In
fact, they normalize it. Homeland at least attempts to create
a gray area, but only in the suggestion that Agent Mathison might be
wrong about Brody, not whether the invasive tactics she uses are disproportionate
to the threat the man actually poses.

But there’s the rub: If Brody is
indeed a sleeper agent about to wage another spectacular domestic attack,
are a few cameras, bugs, and GPS tracking devices even that unreasonable?

What was it that Huxley said about
“manipulation of the environment and of the thoughts and feelings
of individual men, women, and children”?

Let’s hope the reviewers are wrong
and like many of today’s best-hyped TV premiers, these stinkers
eventually land in pilot purgatory.

If not, they may be useful to watch,
like looking into a crystal ball into our future.

While I haven't seen either of these shows, it does make sense that the networks would take the terror action genre to the next level. Doesn't sound like ABC/Disney has gotten on the bandwagon yet and they are the greatest cheerleaders for the establishment. Once they do, we'll truly have an insight into our future told in the repugnant politically correct way.

Homeland does sound intriguing though, precisely because it's produced by some of the people behind 24 and The X-Files. So there could be some surprises, just as the first season of 24 wasn't about race as we were lead to believe at first. Not to mention that the governments in 24 don't come out looking all that good and it'll be interesting to see in the upcoming movie how Jack Bauer perceives his government that has let him down so many times.

Less encouraging though is that Homeland is based on an israeli TV series, and two of its producers also produce Homeland. I've never believed the line that the media gives us what we want/what is profitable. They do have an agenda and they'll pursue it regardless of profits. And no doubt they've been tasked with making government intrusion in what is left of our private lives more palatable to the masses, even cool and exciting, after all, what do you have to hide if you're innocent, right? Makes you miss the days when government was correctly portrayed as the bad guy embodied in the Cigarette-Smoking Man.

George

Unfortunately, the comment that "Homeland does sound intriguing" because of who produces it indicates that many people who should be condemning it will instead be watching it and appreciating it for its "artistic" value," such as plot surprises, etc. "24" kept the vast majority of Americans subjecting themselves to this social conditioning by the "militarists" normalizing torture for years because of the supposed exciting plot. That's where the communists failed and America excelled; we make propaganda exciting and interesting. American Exceptionalism!

Good article Kelley.

RickR30

It helps to watch something in order to condemn it appropriately. Nothing wrong with appreciating artistic value and a good story as long as one is aware of the other side as well- propaganda, indoctrination, and the motives hollywood has for doing what it does. And yes, 24 is one the best shows US television has ever produced and it can't just be reduced to torture propaganda.

Smithboy

Why has the devestation and horror of Afghanistan and Iraq been kept from view…public opinion, of course. My favorite nudge to those who back the Afghanistan war is to ask them to observe the background the next time you see a report of our soldiers conducting operations in Afghanistan. I tell them you will always see the same picture, that being, our soldiers fighting behind a half blown away mud brick wall, while goats scamper around. I then say, does this 12th century village really look like a strategic location that must be defended by precious American lives?

Then there are the warmongering neocon profiteers who control so much of what we see and hear. I think the black out of the Iraq war is summed up best by a statement told to Lara Logan when she wanted to file a report about an American soldier. The producer at CBS told Logan,"“One guy in uniform looks like any other guy in a uniform.” That's the kind of respect our soldiers are given, by these pencil neck armchair general geeks, after being fed into a meat grinder for 10 years!

F.A. Hayek Fan

Hollywood and the government have been using propaganda techniques like this for decades in the form of cop shows. It's not surprising that they would take it to the next level.

toldyouso

The irony is that the very existence of these intrusive government powers will draw the biggest crooks, such as J. Edgar Hoover, into government service.

Phil Giraldi

Thank you Kelley! I had recorded Homeland and was going to watch it in spite of the fact that my daughter informed me that it was written by the same team that produced Glee, but now I will instead watch Pan Am, which also has a CIA driven plot set in the sixties. I wish Mad Men would return – just drinking, smoking, and running around with other peoples' wives. All healthy (or not) American preoccupations.

Kelley V

thanks phil — myself, I'm awaiting season 2 of AMC's "the walking dead" this sunday. the world turned zombie. it's closer to home than any of these shows will be!

liveload

Zombies allow us to imagine killing people without all the undesirable consequences…kind of like drone warfare. It's us taking our aggression out on parodies of ourselves.

Phil Giraldi

My favorite CIA tv show was The Scarecrow and Mrs. King back in the 1980s with Bruce Boxleitner and Kate Jackson. The CIA guys were depicted as being so secretive at headquarters that they addressed each other by cover names, i.e. Scarecrow. "Hey Scarecrow, get me a cuppa coffee." But Mrs King was in her true name because she was only an extremely talented amateur. They busted all kinds of bad guys using his professional skills and her intuition and they never had any kind of sex together that I can recall. Nice, clean, wholesome CIA fun as seen by Hollywood. Nobody waterboarded or shot in the back of the head.

Excellent analysis – I hope this gets linked and reposted far and wide.

Wootie Berster

As a psychologist, I can assert that the effectiveness of television as a medium of social control is based on.. flickering. The rate of flicker of the television screen is close to that of film moving through a projector. This flickering is what gives these media their power to influence. Basically, it's hypnosis, literally.

This is a phenomenon which is widely understood but seldom discussed. The reasons for this should be clear.

Incidently, I haven't had a connected television in my house for many years. I haven't been in a movie theater for several decades. Not for everyone, I agree, but personally, knowing what I do about the mechanics of consciousness and the methodology of social control, I find it easy to tolerate a little boredom as much preferable to the alternative. And.. there thousands of good books I have yet to get to.

liveload

Add to this article the rampant glorification of militarism in sporting events, evangelical mega-churches pushing apocalypse at every opportunity, glorification of government authority through cop/lawyer/Govt Agent shows, legitimization of the destruction of the Bill of Rights through fear, and a culture of acting like you're afraid to fit in and being proud to be willfully ignorant also to fit in … and you start to get a more realistic picture of America. It's an effect on the society which probably hasn't been seen since the days of the Third Reich.

liveload

I meant to say "..and a culture of acting like you're afraid just to fit in and being proud to be willfully ignorant also just to fit in"

Sorry bout that

camus10

outstanding report Ms Vlahos

however, why not point directly at the godless theology of the writers and the target audience. There is no other way to set right from wrong then to point how the evildoer scoundrels may actually be the same taking the highground. If the chief underwriters pentagon brass remain enamored by false fundamentalism, shouldnt that plot be exposed. Why allow sociopaths the benefit of good cinematography

Great article, and the Hollywood propaganda function, honed during WWII has grown ever more sophisticated and insidious. Points of light: Simon Baker in The Mentalist constantly bucks authority, constantly breaks idiotic rules, and overtly does not trust any authority, include law enforcement. He does so non-violently. Harry's Law (Kathy Bates) has featured jury nullification, and the arrogance and lawlessness of law enforcement and prosecutors.

Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, a Washington, D.C.-based freelance writer, is a longtime
political reporter for FoxNews.com and
a contributing editor at The American Conservative.
She is also a Washington correspondent for Homeland Security Today magazine. Her Twitter account is @KelleyBVlahos.